Why is my fetchRequest returning nil?

My fetch request is returning nil from an entity that I think I've successfully put data into and after hours and hours of debugging, I haven't been able to figure it out. (Disclaimer: I've looked at the countless threads here on SO that talk about fetch requests and unwrapping options but every one I found is about how to deal with the unwrapping error. I'm asking for help figuring out why my fetch request isn't returning a record when I believe it should.)

In the view controller where I'm going to display the data, I have this in viewWillAppear:

func saveContext () {
if managedObjectContext.hasChanges {
do {
try managedObjectContext.save()
} catch {
// Replace this implementation with code to handle the error appropriately.
// abort() causes the application to generate a crash log and terminate. You should not use this function in a shipping application, although it may be useful during development.
let nserror = error as NSError
NSLog("Unresolved error \(nserror), \(nserror.userInfo)")
abort()
}
}
}

I'm learning CoreData so at this point I have to assume there's something basic I'm just missing.